Arkansas-Mizzou has different feel in '23

Arkansas coach Eric Musselman and Missouri coach Dennis Gates are shown on the sidelines during non-conference games early in the 2022-23 season. (AP Photos/Michael Woods & Jeff Roberson)

FAYETTEVILLE — Wednesday night’s meeting between Arkansas and Missouri will have a vastly different feel than the last time the teams met at Bud Walton Arena.

The Razorbacks were 0-3 in Southeastern Conference play and used the matchup as a get-right game of sorts, hammering the Tigers 87-43 to kickstart a nine-game winning streak. 

Missouri fell to 7-8 overall, 1-2 in league games and remained under .500 in both respects the rest of the season.

Fast forward nearly one year, the teams with largely new rosters will make up the first ranked-versus-ranked SEC home opener for the Razorbacks since joining the conference in the early 1990s. Tipoff is set for 7:30 p.m. on SEC Network.

Arkansas (11-2, 0-1 SEC) is No. 13 in this week’s Associated Press Top 25 poll. Missouri debuted at No. 20 behind a 12-1 start and is ranked for the first time since February 2021.

“As much as our guys are on social media, I certainly hope that as they’re scrolling through things that they can see Missouri is ranked,” Arkansas coach Eric Musselman said Monday during his radio show. “They weren’t ranked last year. They have a new coaching staff, a mainly entirely new roster other than keeping their star player in Kobe Brown.

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“I think the biggest thing in any sport is you have to have tremendous respect for your opposition. Certainly, I do. I’ve done as much prep for this game as any game I can remember because it’s a big game for us.”

The Tigers will enter boasting one of the nation’s top offenses. They are averaging 88.8 points per game – third in the country – and own the No. 4 offensive efficiency rating, according to KenPom data, at 117.6 points per 100 possessions.

Missouri finished last season outside the top 150 in offensive efficiency.

Its success in 2022-23 has been keyed by five players averaging 10-plus points, led by Cleveland State transfer guard D’Moi Hodge (16.5) and Brown (15.6). Hodge is second among SEC players with 41 three-pointers made.

The Tigers, coming off wins over Illinois and Kentucky, have made 130 threes this season and hit 37.1% of their attempts. Only Alabama has made more triples.

“I think they play really hard,” Musselman said of Missouri. “I think they’re extremely well-coached. I think they understand their roles. They’re a team that looks like they’re having fun together, and they’re really healthy.

“They did a great job in the portal. And there’s guys who we haven’t even talked about that are coming in off the bench and doing a good job for them, so it’s a well-coached, confident basketball team. They’re probably playing their best basketball of the season their last two games.”

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What makes the game more intriguing is Arkansas owns the No. 5 defensive efficiency rating in college basketball, according to KenPom analytics. The Razorbacks have allowed 87.9 points per 100 possessions this season.

Only Tennessee, Houston, Rutgers and Connecticut have a better mark.

Musselman this week said two of Arkansas’ primary keys to victory are defending without fouling and transition defense. He added that Hodge has a tendency to leak out in broken-floor situations for three-point attempts, and the Tigers have multiple players who can knock down perimeter jumpers as trail men.

Missouri is averaging 19.6 fast-break points per game, and it scored 17 against Kentucky and 18 against Illinois. 

Arkansas is giving up 8.1 transition points per outing.

“That’s a great program. Coach Muss does a great job,” first-year Missouri coach Dennis Gates said on the College Hoops Today podcast with Jon Rothstein. “Their crowd is an unbelievable crowd, and they have done it over a long period of time. I was a young assistant at Nevada when Coach Muss was a coach for the Reno Bighorns in the G League, so I’ve seen him and known him for some time.

“I respect everything that he’s done and everything that he will do. They are a talented group of players.”

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Valuing possession figures to be another must in the game. Both teams rank in the top 10 nationally in defensive turnover percentage, per KenPom.

Arkansas has forced a turnover on 24.9% of opponents’ possessions, and Missouri has done the same on 26.1% of possessions thus far.

The Razorbacks have been preparing for the Tigers’ pressure in a creative way.

“We have a ball security car wash drill where everybody is lined up in a line and one guy goes down and he’s dribbling or picks the ball up and everybody is slapping at him, much like an old-school football drill,” Musselman said. “We’re trying to use the overload principle in everything we’re doing right now.

“There are some teams defensively … scoring the basketball in league play is going to be hard. There’s a group of five or six teams that are playing elite, elite defensively.”